At least 200 million Indian citizens suffer with mental health problems and more than 80% go untreated.
According to the WHO, India spend 3.5% of its GDP on healthcare and 0.05% of that amount is spent on mental health. Most of this is diverted to specialist psychiatric institutions, which only treat the most severe cases of mental illness.
India has a total of 9000 psychiatrists for a population of 1.38 billion. This equates to 0.75 psychiatrists per 100,000 population. The desirable figure would be >3 per 100,000 (high-income countries have >6 per 100,000). This means India would need at least 36,000 psychiatrists to reach minimum staffing requirements. If both population and attrition rates of psychiatrists were kept at 0%, India would need 2700 new psychiatrists annually to meet staffing needs in the next 10 years. However, only 700 psychiatrists are trained per annum.
At least 50 million people suffer with mental health problems in Nigeria and fewer than 10% have access to treatment.
~3% of the government's health budget goes to mental health, and over 90% of this is diverted to psychiatric hospitals. Nigeria has an estimated 250 psychiatrists for its 213 million citizens. This equates to 0.12 psychiatrists per 100,000 population. Nigeria would need to train a minimum 6000 psychotherapists to bridge the treatment gap this way. Nigerian doctors are amongst the lowest remunerated globally. This has led to an exodus of nearly 50% of Nigerian doctors, where they have emigrated to countries with greater pay and work satisfaction.
Even if staff numbers were to drastically increase, 95% of Nigerians are not currently covered by any form of health insurance. An estimated 83% of Nigerians pay for medical care out of their own pocket, severely limiting access to any kind of health care.
Scaling up current methods across India & Nigeria would require substantial financial investment from their respective governments and would take decades to engender any sustained impact. Digital interventions could meet the treatment needs of hundreds of millions in a much shorter timescale, and remains the only practical and feasible solution to addressing the magnitude of the problem.